Magnetic cards are known as an information recording medium for recording various information. Although those magnetic cards can be manufactured cheaply, they are not capable of recording a large amount of information. There has also been a problem that security protection is difficult to ensure in the magnetic cards. In order to solve these problems, IC cards have been developed and spread in recent years, and those IC cards are capable of storing a large amount of information and the security protection is easy to ensure.
Of such IC cards, contactless IC cards are excellent in its functionality for performing high speed data exchanges only by bringing an IC card close to a reader/writer. Further, the contactless IC cards offer an advantage of not requiring maintenance. Thus, it is desired that the contactless IC cards be applied to various purposes such as train tickets, commutation tickets, and ski lift cards.
Because this type of contactless IC cards are not capable of displaying the contents of data on a standalone basis, confirming remaining value information and history information stored in an IC card requires an external data reading and displaying device for reading and displaying these information. This is because conventional contactless IC cards are made to operate on power derived from received signal from an external device, and, with such weak power, it is hard to operate a displaying device provided in the IC cards for displaying remaining values and the like.
However, it has caused inconvenience for users that, when a user utilizes contactless IC cards as electronic money of small amount or train ride tickets, the user cannot confirm the amount used and remaining value if a data reading and displaying device is not available close by.
Additionally, there are problems of having a small communication range and being vulnerable to noise because conventional contactless IC cards cannot obtain a large amount of power, being driven by rectifying the power of received signal.